María Belén MONCAYO

María Belén Moncayo Benalcázar is Ecuadorian and has been living in Central America for seven years. She holds a law degree from the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador and a master's degree in Development, Environment, and Societies from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium.
She has extensive professional experience spanning 12 years in Ecuador's public administration, in the fields of development planning; formulation, implementation, and evaluation of public policies and budgetary frameworks with a focus on rights and equality; territorial development, climate change, natural heritage conservation; local participatory management processes; and territorial conflict management.
She has held government positions in Ecuador, including Undersecretary of Planning and Public Policy at the Secretariat of Planning (2009-2012), Coordinating Minister of Cultural and Natural Heritage (2012-2013), Deputy Minister of Knowledge and Human Talent (2013-2015), Deputy Secretary General of the Presidency of the Republic (2018), and Ambassador of Ecuador to Nicaragua (2018-2020).
Since 2022, she has served as Coordinator of the EBALAC, VOCES, and Tejiendo Redes projects for IUCN, and more recently as an expert on human rights in conservation.